Variety has confirmed a CHUD scoop saying that Marcus Nispel will direct Conan for Nu Image/Millennium Films, ending a nine-year development ordeal to reinvent the Robert E. Howard-created barbarian first immortalized onscreen by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1982.

Production on the remake is set to start late this year in Bulgaria and South Africa. Nu Image/Millennium is making the film in a co-production with Lionsgate. Avi Lerner and Joe Gatta are producing with Fredrick Malmberg.

The film will be the most financially ambitious ever for Lerner, with a script by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, whose credits include Sahara and Cowboys & Aliens.

Nispel will make Conan his third remake, after The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th.

Nispel said he will blend his childhood imaginings of the character with the influence of the famous Conan illustrations by Frank Frazetta, and the influence of such viscerally violent period films as Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.